


Whoever you want me to be

by orphan_account



Category: HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trap
Genre: M/M, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19060309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Zhao Zi thought he was prepared for anything while working undercover on a mission to bust a drug ring— getting shot, being held hostage, losing a limb...What he was not prepared for was a night of gay panic.





	Whoever you want me to be

"Zhao Zi, you really need to chill every time we go undercover. It doesn't really line up with the whole incognito thing we're going for," Shao Fei complained. They were all standing around procrastinating on their work, which was always a chain effect; one person would ‘take a stretch break,’ and then five minutes later no one in the vicinity would be even trying to be productive.

" _You_ of all people don't get to talk to me about having no chill," Zhao Zi huffed.

"And also, the rest of us want a chance to be the loud, extra one, too. You can't hog all the fun," Yu Qi added.

"We're here to catch bad guys, not have fun," Jun Wei said, which sounded very reasonable, but also very boring.

"Fine," Zhao Zi pouted, “when we go undercover tonight, I can just be a quietly morose businessman. A businessman drinking away his pain after his girlfriend left him because...because he would always eat all the snacks in the house and never save any for her."

"That's oddly specific," Shao Fei squinted at him.

"Did something like that happen to you?" Yu Qi leaned in slyly, always hungry for gossip.

"No, he's never dated before, remember?" Shao Fei reminded them, like the wonderful bro he was.

"Aww, stop making fun of Zhao Zi. There just haven't been any beauties that have caught his eye," Jun Wei said, slinging an arm around Zhao Zi's shoulder to ruffle his hair.

"Where would I find any beauties? I'm stuck here with you guys all day," he said petulantly.

"Hey!" Yu Qi said.

"Are you saying I'm not beautiful?" Shao Fei gripped his heart in pain.

"Guys! Guys! Hey, come on!" Captain Shi roared as he walked by, “What are you all doing? Are we at a bar or an office?"

"Sorry, boss," Zhao Zi said, ducking his head to avoid that angry glare as they scurried back to their desks, pretending to do research on the current case.

When the boss had his back turned, Yu Qi turned to whisper to him, "also aren't you forgetting something in your backstory?"

"Huh?" Zhao Zi said, confused.

"We're going undercover in a gay club. Why would you be sad about your ex-girlfriend?"

"Oh, that's a good point,” he paused for a second, and then, "wait, no it's not, people can like both! Or neither!"

Shao Fei, who was listening in on their whispering that was probably too loud to really qualify as whispering, sent him a thumbs up. Zhao Zi grinned proudly and sent one back.

 

* * *

 

For their mission tonight, while the rest of the crew was scoping out the crowded dance floor, Zhao Zi found a little lounge table in the corner and parked himself there with a tray of fake shots.

The multicolored flashing lights in the club made it difficult for him to look for their target, but his seat had a good general view of the whole place. The interior was very modern, the clean white minimalistic furniture serving to offset the intensity of the turquoise blue and dark purple lights. There was a stage opposite the bar at the other end of the room, and a more dimly lit VIP section adjacent to it. That was where the drug exchange would most likely occur according to the briefing, as the gang leader was probably counting on everyone else being too distracted by performance on stage to pay him and his associates any attention.

After a few minutes of staring intensely at the VIP tables, he concluded that there probably wouldn’t be any relevant activity yet as it was too early, so he tossed back a few fake tequilas and lost himself in his thoughts. He continued inventing his elaborate backstory for himself. He was a businessman who had recently returned from Japan, only to find out once he'd returned that his half-brother had poisoned their mother in order to conceal a dark birth secret that would prevent him from inheriting the company. In addition, his dog was just diagnosed with leukemia, and his girlfriend had left him for her childhood friend, who was secretly a rich second-generation.

Look, he'd watched a lot of dramas with his grandmother, all right?

He was so distracted by his attempts to multi-task at both daydreaming while still doing his job that he didn't even notice someone had sidled next to him on the sofa until he turned his head and found himself inches away from a large grinning face. He definitely did not make any sort of embarrassing noise as he jumped in surprise.

He moved to scooch a little to his right to create some distance between him and this stranger, but realized there was nowhere to go since he was sitting in a corner.

"Hello?" Zhao Zi offered, squinting at the man. He was a very unreasonably handsome man. If Zhao Zi had been at this club for any reason other than for work, he would've been mad that this guy had chosen to sit next to him making Zhao Zi look bad in comparison. Not that he had any serious self-esteem issues or anything, but there was a difference between being sculpted by a power-collaboration between Michelangelo and Donatello versus being sculpted by a pretty decent first-year art student.

He snapped out of his thoughts to realize that the man was still giving him the same wide smile. "You're too cute to be sitting here by yourself looking so gloomy," the redheaded man commented.

"I, uh…huh?" Zhao Zi stammered.

"What happened to make you all sad like this?" the newcomer asked, sounding almost gentle.

Zhao Zi had a great answer to that question. In fact, he had an entire movie script’s worth of answers to that question, but he could not for the life of him remember what that tragic backstory was supposed to be in the face of this indecency in front of him—this indecency being a wine-red shirt with the top few buttons undone to reveal a wide expanse of bare skin.

The redhead followed his dazed line of sight before commenting, "oh, you like my shirt? I got it on sale.” And then he winked. It was truly a devastating wink.

"My girlfriend just broke up with me and my dog has leukemia!" Zhao Zi shouted, unsure why he was shouting these facts or why his heart was beating so fast.

"I'm sorry to hear about your dog," the man said sincerely, "but I'm not sorry at all to hear about your girlfriend."

"What?" Zhao Zi blinked in confusion.

"Because it means now I have a chance, doesn't it?"

Zhao Zi felt like his cheeks were going to fall off from how much they were burning. This guy was flirting, wasn't he? Admittedly, Zhao Zi could be oblivious at times, but this was...definitely flirting. Probably. Maybe?

Before he could get the chance to reply, another man came over and interrupted them by putting a hand on the redhead's shoulder. "Come on, Jack. It's time already."

This man named Jack, apparently, sent the other guy an annoyed glare before turning back to Zhao Zi. "How long are you planning on staying tonight? Will you be here for the performance?"

Well, he kind of had to be, since he was on the job and all, but why was this guy asking? Zhao Zi just nodded in confusion and was rewarded with another blinding grin.

"All right, come find me before you leave, okay?" And then he was swept away.

Baffled, Zhao Zi tried to make sense of what just happened, but no matter how hard he tried nothing made sense, and he was starting to feel a little lonely now that his only conversation partner for the night had left.

He looked towards the VIP section and noted that still, nothing peculiar was going on. His eyes roamed until they landed on Shao Fei, who was on the dance floor and was maybe taking this undercover role a bit too seriously? He was dancing quite, er, _erotically_ with another man—so close that only a crowbar could pry them apart. Wait, Meng Shao Fei actually knew how to dance? Then what was that odd flailing he was doing that one time when Yu Qi was trying to get him to dance with her?

His contemplations were interrupted by the stage lights suddenly lighting up, the other lights in the club dimming slightly as if to give way for the brilliance of the new ones.

To his surprise, the redhead he was just talking to walked onto the stage—or, no, _stalked_ was a more accurate description of the way he moved about as if he owned the stage, the club—the city, even, and cared nothing for all of it.

Somehow, that smile which had been charming just thirty minutes ago took on a dark, sinister quality, building a dangerous sort of tension in the atmosphere. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths, unsure if their instincts were trying to tell them to run away as fast as humanly possible or to get as close as they dared.

Zhao Zi was uncertain of what was going on. Was he up there to...sing? Rap? Beatbox? Make a speech? None of those seemed to fit the atmosphere of a club.

The redhead commanding the stage leisurely brought one hand up to his face, licked a slow stripe from his wrist to the tip of his fingers, and then swiftly used his teeth to tear off one fingerless leather glove before flinging it into the crowd. There was a split second of what felt like dead silence despite the roaring bass in the background before one brave person whooped, and immediately the entire crowd went absolutely wild.

Why was Jack giving his clothes away for free? And why was everyone so excited about it?

The stage lights then abruptly shifted hues from dark blue to blood red, and with one fluid movement, the man on stage ripped his shirt off, the buttons falling off and scattering across the stage.

The crowd yelled harder, and Zhao Zi was pretty sure his jaw had become permanently unhinged with how wide it dropped. _Oh_. It was _that_ kind of performance.

The sheer perfection of that torso was unreal, and its owner clearly knew it, with the way he dragged his currently bare hand sensually down his abdomen to the zipper of his pants. Zhao Zi felt like he could lift weights every second of every day for a decade and still never reach that level of perfection. His fingers itched to touch, and heat stirred in his belly. There was a little tiny part of Zhao Zi that had always wondered if he'd like men, but now his whole body seemed to be on board while his brain was struggling to catch up.

Couldn't he have picked any other time to have a crisis? He was still on duty! And there was still a drug ring to bust!

The eyes of the man on stage roamed the crowd before they found his own, and Zhao Zi froze. _Oh no_. _Oh no, oh no, oh no._ Panicked, he tore his gaze away from the stage immediately, but he could only resist looking away for a few seconds before his eyes found their way back. Jack was still staring straight at him, although there was now an intense gleam in those eyes trapping him in place as if daring him to look away again. Zhao Zi swallowed. Nope, no. Not okay. He pinched himself in the thigh to break himself out of his daze before turning around, fully prepared to run and hide in the bathroom.

Before he could take more than one step, however, the sound of a gunshot rang out across the club. It was followed by screaming, and amidst all the noise he heard Shao Fei's voice shout, "This is the police! Hands above your heads!"

Heart racing wildly now for a different reason altogether, Zhao Zi ran towards the commotion, pushing his way through a crowd that was fearfully trying to run in the opposite direction. Once he got closer, he noticed that the situation didn’t appear to be very good.

He ducked behind a wall to conceal himself before assessing the scene. Yu Qi had evidently taken one guy down, but now another man was holding a gun to her head, and Shao Fei and Jun Wei didn’t seem to be faring any better. The police had backup outside the club, but the gang leader had ordered his men to hold hostage the remaining unlucky civilians who'd been unable to get outside in time.

Shao Fei was speaking in a calm, rational tone, trying to negotiate with the leader who seemed to realize that there was no way of escaping without a jail sentence yet did not intend to go without a fight. People in desperate situations did illogical things, and Zhao Zi was not about to sit back and allow this man to shoot his best friend.

He lined up his gun to the gang leader’s head, fully prepared to pull the trigger when someone emerged from the shadows behind him and grabbed his arm, pulling it back. To his surprise, it was the man from earlier who had pulled Jack away from their conversation.

"Wait," the man said calmly to Zhao Zi. He was just about to protest when all the lights in the club went out.

A quick series of shots rang out in succession before the lights immediately flashed back on, the whole incident lasting no more than two seconds. When he looked back at the scene, he saw that there were no gang members left standing save for the leader of the organization, who was currently bent over the table with his arms behind his back and a gun to his temple.

The man holding the gun was Jack.

Zhao Zi could admit he was wholly unprepared for that twist.

The doors to the club were suddenly yanked open and their boss, Captain Shi, ran inside, flanked by the rest of their support.

"We'll take him from here. Thank you for all your help," Jack nodded to Zhao Zi’s boss. Clearly, they were previously acquainted. A pair of men standing behind him stepped forward to place handcuffs on the incapacitated target before leading him away.

"It's no problem at all, thank _you_ ," his boss replied with polite respectfulness in his tone that was usually reserved for people he couldn't afford to offend.

"Hold up. Who even are you?" Zhao Zi squinted, directing this question at Jack, who, to his dismay, was still shirtless. And perfect.

"If you really want to know, come get drinks with me tonight and find out.” There was another wink. It was still just as devastating as the first time.

And it was only out of pure curiosity, Zhao Zi told himself unconvincingly, that he ended up saying yes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> guess who Shao Fei is dancing with ;)  
> hint: it's definitely not andy


End file.
